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Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

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Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#131

Post by heavyset_go »

getcrunk wrote: post #9

It's crazy watching the world turn into a dystopia and being powerless to stop it. It not just about this company. If they fail another will replace it. Society seems to be on a convergent path with dystopian scifi. This, Chicago police automated policing program (detects crime before it happenes and actually hurt innocent people), racially biased facial recognition. I read an article today about some DNA software be…

> This, Chicago police automated policing program (detects crime before it happenes and actually hurt innocent people)

One of the worst things I've seen was posted here on HN[1] almost a year ago. It's an in-depth report on a similar program to Chicago's, but in Florida.

There was a companion article[2] with videos from the program, and it's just horrifying. It shows several videos taken from body cameras of police officers harassing, assaulting and abducting people, some of them children, because they showed up in their system as being related to, or knowing, people who are suspected, and not convicted, of crimes.

Here's a summary of the program[3], and law enforcement's own comments about its purpose:

> The motivation of the program is more sinister than merely “fighting crime”: The Sheriff’s Office acknowledged that they want these “problem people” gone. Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco, the architect of the program, boasted that the goal was to predict which residents are likely to commit crimes and then “take them out.” In the words of a former Pasco County deputy, they were under orders to “[m]ake their lives miserable until they move or sue.”

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24363871

[2] https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p...

[3] https://ij.org/case/pasco-predictive-policing/

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#132

Post by a4isms »

evo_9 wrote: post #102
kleer001 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days? Well, the last 40 years... CNN started in 1980.

'Extra Extra Read All About it!' from anon newspaper kid standing on the street-corner ~100+ years ago (probably older).

That had a literal meaning at one point, but then it got diluted.

Newspapers were published several times a day when I was a child, so the late edition would have things that happened in the afternoon.

If something very big happened, they would put out an “extra” edition and trucks would race to get the extras out to the newsstands, newspaper boxes, and corner stores.

A news agent shouting “Extra! Extra!” was originally informing people that something had happened and the news was in the freshly printed “extra” edition, so even if they’d already bought a paper that day, they’d be motivated to buy another.

https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/ext...

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#133

Post by sbagel »

vmception wrote: post #21

> Citizen does moderate comments, but "two people having an argument about whether or not someone’s comment is racist drives engagement," LOL, my publicist does this on linkedin and other places for us because people are gullible. Source article: Executive of does a thing 0 engagement, nobody knows Social Media version: [First] Executive of does a thing 15,000 comments, 2 million reach, supporters and detractors argu…

Users getting so offended by this comment are hilarious. He didn't create this system, if you were in a similar position tasked to get attention for a client or business you could take the high road of not using proven social media tactics and fail miserably. The sanctimonious take that he's a 'manipulative asshole' for playing the system is laughable. Don't hate the player hate the game.

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#134

Post by TeMPOraL »

wolverine876 wrote: post #44

In case people are missing the broader point of the article, beyond the horrifying incident at the beginning: "The whole idea behind Protect is that you could convince people to pay for the product once you’ve gotten them to the highest point of anxiety you can possibly get them to," one former employee said, referring to Citizen's subscription service. "Citizen can’t make money unless it makes its users believe ther…

Oh god. Reminds me of this talk given a certain lawyer, Cliff Ennico, called "How to sell anything to anybody". I watched it by recommendation of a family member, and the very gist of it is: there are two reasons people buy stuff - desire, and fear. If you can artificially inflate either and promise your product will resolve their discomfort, people will rush to buy your wares.

I remember being both appalled at the deep immorality of exploiting this, and scared of how true this is.

In this instance, we have a company that went with the "induce fear" approach.

A different, really strong example of selling on fear is the whole cottage industry of products and services for parents. People who are expecting or just had their first child are probably the easiest group to sell to. I say that as a relatively fresh parent myself. All you have to do is to hint that there's a non-zero probability of some danger to life or health of a newborn, and say that your product mitigates it, and you can sell us absolutely anything at almost any price.

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#135

Post by jkr42 »

sbagel wrote: post #133
vmception wrote: post #21

> Citizen does moderate comments, but "two people having an argument about whether or not someone’s comment is racist drives engagement," LOL, my publicist does this on linkedin and other places for us because people are gullible. Source article: Executive of does a thing 0 engagement, nobody knows Social Media version: [First] Executive of does a thing 15,000 comments, 2 million reach, supporters and detractors argu…

Users getting so offended by this comment are hilarious. He didn't create this system, if you were in a similar position tasked to get attention for a client or business you could take the high road of not using proven social media tactics and fail miserably. The sanctimonious take that he's a 'manipulative asshole' for playing the system is laughable. Don't hate the player hate the game.

If you think anyone is offended here you simply don’t understand the Internet.

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#136

Post by robbiep »

vmception wrote: post #54
jakelazaroff wrote: post #6

> Citizen, using a new livestreaming service it had just launched called OnAir, would catch the suspect live on air, with thousands of people watching. I'm sorry, is this describing real life or an episode of Black Mirror? It's so blatantly dystopian that I'm at a loss for words.

It is real life. I’ve uninstalled the app multiple times because it was obvious that it was manufacturing anxiety. I was the first in my circles to delete Facebook and other social media profiles for the same reason (actually delete the profile not just uninstall). I felt others just didn’t notice what was going on. With Citizen I then learned to just disable notifications.

If you’ve deleted the app a number of times, does that mean you support/find the baseline functionality of the app useful? So even though they’re an outrage machine, you support the business model?

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#137

Post by joe_the_user »

leetcrew wrote: post #56
wolverine876 wrote: post #44

In case people are missing the broader point of the article, beyond the horrifying incident at the beginning: "The whole idea behind Protect is that you could convince people to pay for the product once you’ve gotten them to the highest point of anxiety you can possibly get them to," one former employee said, referring to Citizen's subscription service. "Citizen can’t make money unless it makes its users believe ther…

I do notice, at least in my city, that there seem to be a lot more reports of violent crime in my area on citizen than I would expect from looking at the city's official crime map data. that said, I don't trust the city enough to conclude that the inaccuracy is mostly on citizen's side.

In most places, crimes are reported to the city by average people but then investigated to determine if anything actually occurred. As far as I know, Citizen lets people reports things with no filtering at all.

So by all means, use an anti-government stance to trust a stream of completely unverified claims.

My local paper does the service of publishing 911/police reports. Some would make it to a crime map but a lot of this merits a shrug. Example: "A caller from Rollins View Drive, near Bear Springs Road, reported a heated verbal altercation with a neighbor that ended when they spat in the caller’s face." - avoid heated arguments with neighbor. The only way this realistically gets into a crime report is if a cop/DA really doesn't like the spitter, etc.

Overall: Of course, police reports aren't fully accurate but the reports of "Citizen", being completely unfiltered, allow wingnuts and busybodies put out their narrative in an unfettered fashion.

https://www.theunion.com/news/nevada-county-police-blotter-c...

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#138

Post by ctdonath »

grenoire wrote: post #19

American HN readers: Is everything alright? It seems a new kind of on-the-edge over there. Does it truly feel unsafe to the extent that people resort to violent and intrusive systems like these?

Things are so good here (really) that people are freaking out trying to create hobgoblins to fear.

“Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world. ... But I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.” - The Matrix

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#139

Post by makeworld »

ctdonath wrote: post #92
getcrunk wrote: post #9

It's crazy watching the world turn into a dystopia and being powerless to stop it. It not just about this company. If they fail another will replace it. Society seems to be on a convergent path with dystopian scifi. This, Chicago police automated policing program (detects crime before it happenes and actually hurt innocent people), racially biased facial recognition. I read an article today about some DNA software be…

You’re not powerless. Shut off the anxiety generators, and be the change you want in the world. I dumped Facebook & Twitter, and am reducing HN & other social media. Get news from proper objective sources, choose the category of media you consume (TownsendsPlus.com provides great reality checks), and otherwise choose the life you want to live - and live it.

And companies like this will continue on, making the world worse for everyone. Including you. This cannot be changed by changing yourself.

Re: Citizen’s dangerous effort to cash in on vigilantism

#140

Post by midasuni »

labster wrote: post #128
the_snooze wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is "BREAKING NEWS" these days, complete with fancy graphics and soundtracks. But there just isn't enough news day-to-day to warrant that level of importance. Not everyday is 9/11, much to news outlets' dismay.

BREAKING NEWS is just a synonym for “news”. The addition of the word “breaking” is just a stylistic choice and conveys no additional meaning.

I remember seeing a headline “breaking news Michael Jackson dead”

This was 48 hours after it happened.

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